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Spin Cycle

Running around in a mad dash today. Often running in circles, trying to get everything done. Dasher, Dancer, Prancer and Vixen (on a good day!), that's us.

I taught last night at a nearby library (Happy Booker photo alert!), a joint project funded by the American Library Association and Nextbook. The topic was Fathers and Daughters, the book was Sholem Aleichem's Tevye The Dairyman and the Railroad Stories. The book, one that I hadn't read before, is a series of interconnected monologues, short stories or vignettes, and the Tevye portion has been considered by some to be a "novel."

Novel? This brought me back to last week's discussion on the LBC about the novel-in-stories format. Elizabeth Poliner, our guest blogger and author of Mutual Life & Casualty, wrote:

"Often more a fiction of community than anything else, novel-in-stories often jump, as my book does, from character to character, with an aim of gathering a sense about a community, or about relationships within a community, more than with the aim of telling a story through the traditional novel’s device of unified plot."

Poliner puts in a plug for Kate Walbert’s Our Kind and for Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of Pointed First. (In my own review of Poliner's book, I referenced David Huddle's Story of a Million Years.) Dan Green, in his comment, points to the classic Anderson work, Winesburg, Ohio.

Does anyone else out there have a recommendation for my growing list of "fiction of community," specifically interconnected stories told in multiple points of view? I have spent part of the day compiling my own list and haven't seem to have gotten very far—help! Please leave your recommendations here on the blog and I will compile them to share at a later date. (Also, you have any thoughts about what makes a successful story cycle I would love to hear it!) Thanks in advance! xxoo,THB

Wendi, what comes to mind immediately for me is Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" which is written in separate monologues.
I don't know if this qualifies but Edna O'Brian has a collection of stories, all set in her native Ireland about the characters of her childhood and it's very much a fiction of community, though the "I" is the narrator consistently, it goes into the psyches of people from the same place. It's called "A Fanatic Heart" and Philip Roth wrote a fabulous introduction to the collection.
Also, a lot of Toni Morrison--she oftens does different character voices and points of view to tell one story from a community of participants.

In my very humble (and perhaps obvious) opinion, Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine is the champion of the genre. An astonishing intertwining of place and people, never mind that it's the first of, what, six interconnected books by now? Seven?

Excellent and timely topic! I find the aspect of connection to be most fascinating in books/films of this style. Yes, seeing the same story through multiple points of view is thrilling when done well, but witnessing the impact that characters will have on one another's lives is even more so. Anticipating the impact of 2 (or more) lives colliding is what holds my attention. Check out the film 13 CONVERSATIONS ABOUT THE SAME THING.